This week in TV Guide: September 2, 1961

How to watch TV: 1. Walk over to set. 2. Turn on. 3. Watch.

Well, that's how I learned to watch television when I was a kid, anyway. Obviously, Leo Rosten has something a little more in mind. His idea, however, is even more radical: if you want better television, turn it off.

Rosten, political scientist, author and social critic, calls the current fare on television "dreary at best and ghastly at worst," but that doesn't make it much out of line from other forms of mass media; many newspapers are "sensational and shoddy," paperbacks "that are part of the alleged 'cultural revolution' are shallow and worthless," and "much of what appears on the Broadway stage is banal and unworthy of a civilized man's attention." In that sense, TV is no different. "The public appetite for the silly and the trivial, for sheer distraction, the national mania for "escape" and narcotic "fun"—these are so great and so widespread that one can only wonder how our schools and families and churches have turned out so many people whose taste is so abominable."

Just when you want to dismiss Rosten as another anti-television elitist, however, he confesses: "I love television. I do. I love it and I use it." It is a place to catch up with the news, to view superior dramas, to watch a sporting event without freezing. It gives him "access to a thousand things I could not otherwise experience." And that's the point: it's because Rosten loves television, and because it is here to stay, that he becomes outraged by bad programs. And that's why he says that "[p]arents can surely teach their children how to use TV—instead of letting TV use them." Television did not abolish parents, he notes, nor teachers, preachers and critics, "and I wish they would stop acting as if they were dead."

If you want better TV, Rosten says, vote by turning off the tube. "There is no swifter or more effective way of influencing Madison Avenue than by registering your vote for or against a program—that is, by listening to programs which are superior and by not listening to programs which are bilge." That we spend so much time agonizing over the quality of television programming is a direct indictment of—ourselves. "The chief trouble with television is nothing more or less than the lazy public which patronizes it with so little sense or taste or judgment." Networks would give us better shows, he concludes, "if enough Americans helped them by supporting excellence and throttling that venality which surrounds us." I wonder what he'd think of TV today?

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In the December 31, 1966 issue of TV Guide, Neil Hickey and Joe Finnigan wrote about a "TV disaster" called The Tammy Grimes Show. The reason I bring it up, and I'm counting on you to click on the link and check that article out for yourself, is because this week Edith Efron has a profile of "a truly unusual girl," none other than Tammy Grimes herself.

She's become a star, thanks to her turn in the Broadway hit The Unsinkable Molly Brown. "She drives critics and reporters into frenzied explosions of prose when they try to describe her appearance," Efron writes. One called her "a sexy little screwball," another described her as "sea spray in the Rockies, calypso in a New England cemetery, and Cinderella in a strip tease." And then there's that voice, that "grits like a key turning in a boudoir lock," that "combines froggy throatiness with an amusing squeak." "She talks in a stream-of-consciousness patter, appears to say whatever comes into her mind and almost never answers direct questions," according to a reporter who's interviewed her. There's an oversized quality to her, one made for the stage, that worked to her detriment on The Tammy Grimes Show.

However, says Efron, there's also a "savagely shy, withdrawn girl with wistful little eyes that nibble at one in sidelong glances, a girl with a twisted, crooked smile that looks more like a grimace of pain." She is a private person at heart, one uncomfortable talking about the things that mean the most to her. She admits that she's suspicious about people; "Sometimes I get terribly enthusiastic. I put them up on a pedestal. Then . . they fall down from the pedestal and I am disappointed." For a moment, as she tells Efron this, she seems to relax for the first time. Her desires are not the same as others; "They don't go after something because they want it. They're really not seeking pleasure for themselves at all. They just imitate each other blindly." When she says things like this, one wonders if she isn't talking about her ex-husband, actor Christopher Plummer, father of her daughter and future actress Amanda. ("I never saw a girl child who resembled her father so much. She looks like Henry the Fifth.")

Her desires are simple: the theater, one man, and children. She goes through two more marriages: one to actor Jeremy Slate, which lasts less than two years, and another to composer Richard Bell, which lasted until his death in 2005. Efron notes that once she broached the subject of happiness, she went back into her protective shell. Reading all this, it's easy to picture how this fits in to the disaster of The Tammy Grimes Show. Whether she was "let down" by people who convinced her they knew best about the show, if her personality wasn't suitable for the small screen, or if it was just a lousy show—we'll probably never know this for sure. What we do know is that Tammy Grimes is, as Efron puts it, an "unusual girl," or, as the press calls her, "a kook."

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Care for some morning baseball? Of course you do, and why not, thanks to the Mountain time zone. At 10:55 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, the Detroit Tigers face off at Yankee Stadium against the New York Yankees, with the American League's three top candidates for MVP: Norm Cash of the Tigers (who wins the batting title this season), and Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the Yanks. CBS brings you the games, with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese (◄) behind the microphones. Meanwhile, on NBC the action begins at 11:00 a.m. both days, with Lindsey Nelson and Joe Garagiola calling the play-by-play. Saturday it's the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Milwaukee Braves; Sunday it's the Cleveland Indians in Baltimore against the Orioles. If baseball's not your thing, Wide World of Sports has the World Water Ski Championships from Long Beach, with Jim McKay and Jim Simpson reporting. (3:00 p.m., ABC)

It is indeed a really big shew for Sunday's Ed Sullivan (6:00 p.m. MT, CBS), a rerun from last year with headliners Bobby Darin, Edith Piaf and Trude Adams, plus comedians Wayne and Shuster, Jackie Kannnon, the late Lord Buckley (who died in November, 1960), impressionist Rex Ramer, and the Pompoff Thedy Family of clowns. It's too bad I don't have anything to put up against it, because Ed would be a sure winner.

We've got an article about the resurgence of interest in the Glenn Miller Orchestra, led for the last five years by Ray McKinley, who calls it "real music"; "The kids, brought up on a diet of rock 'n' roll, sit there bored until they begin to listen to the music. Then they join their parents on the dance floor. I guess they find the old folks are right, that our music is pleasant and danceable." Find out for yourself Monday on Glenn Miller Time (8:00 p.m., CBS)

Playhouse 90 has a provocative offering on Tuesday night (7:30 p.m., CBS). "Journey to the Day" shows us what takes place in a group psychotherapy session through the eyes of six patients in a state mental hospital and their doctor. John Frankenheimer directs a stellar cast including Janice Rule, Mike Nichols, James Dunn, Vivian Nathan, James Gregory, and a rare TV appearance by Mary Astor, with Steven Hill as their doctor. A half-hour later, NBC presents a drama about the famed news photographer Margaret Bourke-White (who was played by Farrah Fawcett in a 1989 TV-movie), focusing on her dramatic battle for recovery from Parkinson's disease. Teresa Wright stars as Bourke-White, with Eli Wallach as fellow photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Jack Paar's in Berlin the latter part of the week, so his seat in New York is being filled by Orson Bean on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Fortunately, as far as I know there were no international incidents as a result of Jack's trip.

Thursday at 9:30 p.m. KCPX, the ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, has Tightrope, the police drama starring the pre-Mannix Mike Connors as an unnamed undercover agent who assumes a different persona in each episode; while KTVB, the ABC affiliate in Boise, has The Case of the Dangerous Robin, a ZIV-produced crime drama starring the pre-Combat Rick Jason as an insurance investigator. It's the time slot that, until February, was the home of Take a Good Look, Ernie Kovacs' bizarre panel show, co-starring wife Edie Adams. Ernie and his wild sense of humor (he says he's 10 5/8 years ahead of his time) are the subject of an article by Dwight Whitney. The show was not terribly successful in its two-year stint; Kovacs insists it was a satire of a panel show, but Whitney says the problem was that "he tried to pull his punches, to kid himself and his audience into thinking they actually were watching a panel show." It is a given by now that Kovacs has the most, well, unique sense of humor in the business; Jack Benny once told him that "Normally I hate what I don't understand, but I love this." He is said to have spent $3,000 on one three-second gag ("the used-car salesman whose car dropped through the concrete."). Studio crew members have been known to fight for the privilege of working on his shows. Dutch Masters, his loyal sponsor (even though he smokes only Cuban cigars), loves him; they even liked Take a Good Look. Even though that show is now history, ABC has signed him for a series of specials—three this year, six next year, which he, sadly, will not live to complete. He's not for everyone, but I think Ernie Kovacs is one of the funniest men ever born, and while you can see his influence in many shows over the years, I've yet to see anyone succeed him. And speaking of influence: tonight's Tightrope features a character named "Emile Kovacs." Coincidence?

Another thing on Thursday: Rocky Marciano, the former heavyweight champion, is one of Groucho's guests on You Bet Your Life (8:00 p.m., NBC). His mother was a guest on last week's episode. Friday, KBOI has a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (10:00 p.m.) starring Keenan Wynn and Phyllis Kirk; besides being a humorous episode, it marks the first on-screen appearance of Rod Serling, who actually gets sucked into the story.

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There's an unbylined profile of Dwayne Hickman, star of Dobie Gillis. It's a standard look at a young, level-headed man who's become an accomplished young light comedian, but there's a quote in here I think is worth noting. Rod Amateau, producer-director of Dobie Gillis, says, "I will surprise you. There is Steve McQueen, who has a cute little personality and could be a very fine young light comedian. With that single exception, Dwayne is all alone. Jack Lemmon? He's not young any more." Now there's a thought—Steve McQueen? True, he does have a nice light touch that he displays from time to time, but the King of Cool as a light comedian? The star of Bullitt, The Sand Pebbles, The Magnificent Seven, The Towering Inferno, The Thomas Crown Affair? Yes, a very interesting thought.

Henry Harding's "For the Record" feature at the beginning of the programming section has some notes worth mentioning. There's Robert Wood, the manager of broadcast standards for NBC, i.e. the network censor, talking about the challenge he faces from the myriad number of complaints his office gets from "people or groups "who feel they have been maligned"—anyone from plumbers to milliners. "I don't blame them," he says, "but it sure makes things difficult. If we paid attention to all the complaints, our villains would be faceless, formless, backgroundless and with no visible means of support." And he's not even talking about sponsors, who've been known to meddle a time or two in the details of a story.

Rhode Island Senator John Pastore*, who's had more than one run-in with the television industry, has issued a stern warning to broadcasters about liquor commercials on television. Along with Washington Senator Warren Magnuson, Pastore has said that it would be "foolhardy" for the industry to try and get liquor commercials on television "in these trying times with criticism of the broadcasting industry mounting." The dividing line traditionally has been whiskey; beer and wine are OK to advertise, but nothing harder. Such commercials "would certainly be taken into consideration" when time came for a station's license renewal. The National Association of Broadcasters promises they'll keep their members in line. Pastore, you may recall, was the senator in front of whom Fred Rogers famously testified on the need for funding for public broadcasting back in 1969.

*Fun fact: Pastore won reelection to the Senate in 1970 by defeating an anti-war Catholic priest named John McLaughlin. McLaughlin would later leave the priesthood and become a political pundit and television host. His show—The McLaughlin Group.

I mentioned the New York Yankees earlier; well, WPIX, Channel 11 in New York City, is delirious about its ratings for Yankees baseball this season. They're up 16 percent, not because the Yanks are headed for another American League pennant (they are), but because the M&M Boys, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, are both threatening Babe Ruth's storied single-season record of 60 home runs. "Even former Brooklyn Dodger fans are watching, pulling against them, natch!" Maris breaks the record on the final day of the season, finishing with 61, while Mantle, hobbled by an injury, winds up with a mere 54.

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Finally, it's always good to catch up with the Letters section, to find out what the viewers of America are thinking.

Mrs. E. Schlenger of Stamford, Connecticut is one of a number of letter writers who thought to invoke Dorothy Parker in commenting on last month's article about Joyce Gordon, the glamour girl who wears glasses. She says, "As one of the many who wear glasses, I have come to realize that: "Men who make passes seldom stop at glasses!" Speaking as a man, I have no quarrel with this.

Diane Read Haeselbarth of Maywood, New Jersey, noticed that last month's article on "The Working Mother" was written by a man (George Lefferts, "unless we have another George Sand"), and has a bone to pick with him. "I am a college-educated, ex-newspaper reporter, but according to apparent Lefferts-Margaret Mead standards, I am now a simple, bored housewife." She concludes with an opinion that, a scant ten years later, would be quite unfashionable: "Let us hope for the sake of our own and future generations that the American woman has the sensitivity to recognize challenge in the world, wifehood and motherhood, if she is lucky enough to be so blessed." Hear, hear!

We end with a couple of anonymous letters on "Is Television Aimed at the 12-Year-Old Mind," from the August 19 issue. (You can see that kids and TV was a continuing topic in TV Guides of the time.) A writer in Kimberly, Wisconsin speaks up for the kids who aren't fooled by the pablum that television gives them: "They know what they want even if they put it forth in a childlike manner. The article proves that kids today won't be satisfied with shows that are mediocre, repetitious, uninteresting and unbelievable." Would that I had so much confidence it today's youth—but, of course, they don't watch TV.

The letter of the issue, however—if not of the year—comes from someone signing his/herself as "A 12-Year-Old" in DeWitt, New York, who offers a contrary opinion. "Where did you pick up those oblong 12-year-olds? All the kids around here love bank-bang, shoot-'em-up type of TV shows. As for classics, they're the squarest." And then: "P.S. Please withhold my name for certain personal reasons. Namely my mother." There's not much else one can say after that, is there?  TV

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This week in TV Guide: July 21, 1973

The year is 1967, and you're a Navy flier in Vietnam. While flying a mission on May 18 of that year, you're shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. For nearly six years, until March 4, 1973, you're shuttled from prison to prison, including the infamous "Hanoi Hilton." During that time, you've missed Laugh-In, the Smothers Brothers, and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. You didn't see the end of The Fugitive, Peyton Place or The Ed Sullivan Show. You've never seen Monday Night Football or Big Bird. Even though it's only (!) been six years, you have, in essence, missed an entire generation of American pop culture. This is the world that Lt. Robert Naughton returned to when he was released from North Vietnam custody, and this week he tells Clifford Terry how television has changed during his time as a POW.

He never saw television during those six years, but he and his fellow prisoners talked about it. "I must give it credit for providing us with a lot of entertainment," he says. "We'd discuss the shows we had seen in order to pass the time and cheer each other up." In doing so, he says, "[T]hat's when I awakened to its lack of depth. If I tried to tell the guys the story of a certain episode, I'd realize there really wasn't any. Nor any message." As he thought of the shows he'd once considered his favorites, such as The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, he came to the same conclusion. "My feeling now is that you can be entertained and at the same time have your intellect stimulated."

What might surprise you—or not, when you think about it—is that Naughton doesn't see much of any change in television now from how he remembered it. "only the names of the prime-time shows are different. I saw The Doris Day Show and Sanford and Son, and got a few laughs out of them, but I couldn't watch to the end." He'd always enjoyed Dean Martin, but after seeing a recent show, "I'm sorry to say it was a kind of nothing." As for the #1 show in America, All in the Family, "I thought it was funny, but someone who doesn't do any analyzing may think, 'Oh, everyone's laughing, that must be the way to live.' I couldn't see any subtlety to it. And kids might pick up some of the words, the bigotry."

He enjoys Alistair Cooke's America ("If that could represent the over-all quality, television would be above reproach"), and thinks shows such as Face the Nation and Meet the Press are great, but that it's "almost criminal" that they're stuck on Sunday mornings or afternoons. He's impressed with public television and its capacity to educate young people. As a matter of fact, television's ability to educate as well as enlighten is a big point with him; he points out how more and more people get their news not from newspapers but TV. "The communications media have a real obligation to the country—especially television, because of the fast pace of American life." He enjoys newsmen who present their opinions as well as the news, from Eric Sevareid and Harry Reasoner to Paul Harvey, and he stresses the need of news programs to subject politicians to public scrutiny. "Of course," he cautions, "if it ever should come to the point of slanting the news, then it should be stopped. I heard a lot of slanted news in North Vietnam in the last few years—propaganda that was directed to about the 6th- or 7th-grade level. No subtlety at all."

Not surprisingly, the subject of Hogan's Heroes comes up. "I think they begin [the show] from the point where the prisoners already have been beaten up; they assume everyone knows that a POW is tortured—just by the fact that he is a POW. The program misrepresented what I went through, but the fact that a person is able to laugh at the situation is very true." As Reader's Digest always said, laughter is the best medicine; "A sense of humor got us through quite a bit. We called it 'sick prison humor'." He likes TV's new candidness, as long as it's "handled intelligently and not used as an excuse to make bawdy jokes" He appreciates talk shows such as Dick Cavett's, which isn't afraid to discuss issues frankly and honestly.

In terms of this discussion, one of the things he appreciates most of all is freedom,; radio programs in North Vietnam were broadcast over loudspeakers in the streets, "so you listen whether you want to or not. Here, you can always walk up and turn off the radio or TV. That's one of the freedoms I've come to appreciate: the right to quit." To have the freedom to watch TV or not; that is a great thing. One of the understandings that Robert Naughton came to in prison was the importance, the value, of time. "I thought a good deal about how much time I had watched television—unproductive programs. I more or less made a resolution that I wasn't going to become glued to the TV screen."

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Two of TV's definitive 70s-era rock music shows, NBC's The Midnight Special and ABC's In Concert, faced off on Friday nights. Midnight Special was a weekly show, airing after Johnny Carson, while In Concert was an every-other week part of Wide World of Entertainment.  Whenever the two slug it out, we'll be there to see who's better, who's best.

Funny thing about Channel 9, the then-ABC affiliate in MSP. Throughout the sixties and seventies, Channel 9 would show a movie in place of the network’s Friday late-night offering, showing the pre-empted program instead on Sunday after the late local news. Has to do with revenue from those commercials, I know, but it’s still an interesting quirk in KMSP’s programming.*

*They also frequently delayed the Monday through Thursday offering, particularly during the Les Crane and Joey Bishop eras, until after their 10:30 movie.

So even though there wasn’t a Midnight Special-In Concert clash scheduled for this week, we’ll have one anyway, using Channel 9’s Sunday night’s broadcast of last Friday’s episode. Talk about luck!

In Concert: The Guess Who, B.B. King and Melanie perform in this rock concert taped at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Produced by Dick Clark Teleshows, Inc.

Midnight Special: Hostess Dionne Warwicke, with Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, folk singer Leo Kottke, rock group Malo and pop singer Bud Brisbois.

Dionne Warwicke was in her “e” phase in 1973*, and was also making the talk show rounds. Just before this Midnight Special appearance, she’s appearing with guest host Jerry Lewis on the Tonight Show, and—at least on the Special—she’s going with what made her famous: the songs of Burt Bacharach, including 1968’s hit “I Say a Little Prayer.” Johnny Mathis follows with one of his hits, “Killing Me Softly with Her Song.” Throw in the pre-Gambler Kenny Rogers and singer Leo Kottke (later a frequent guest on radio’s Prairie Home Companion), and you have the kind of eclectic music mix that was a hallmark of top-40 radio, and is virtually non-existent nowadays.

*From the always-reliable Wikipedia: Warwick, for years an aficionado of psychic phenomena, was advised by astrologer Linda Goodman in 1971 to add a small "e" to her last name, making Warwick ‘WARWICKe’ for good luck and to recognize her married name and her spouse, actor and drummer William ‘Bill’ Elliott. Goodman convinced Warwick that the extra small ‘e’ would add a vibration needed to balance her last name and bring her even more good fortune in her marriage and her professional life. Unfortunately, Goodman proved to be mistaken about this. The extra ‘e,’ according to Dionne, "was the worst thing I could have done in retrospect, and in 1975 I finally got rid of that damn ‘’e” and became “Dionne Warwick“ again.’” You’d think she would have known that would happen, don’t you?

Meanwhile, In Concert features some hits of its own: The Guess Who’s “American Woman,” B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” and Melanie’s “What Have They Done to My Song, Ma?” So who’s the winner this week? I’m afraid I’m going to show my age here, but if you can’t share it with your friends, who can you share it with? Midnight Special, on style points alone.

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If it’s July, it must be football season, right? This Friday night the gridiron greats return with coverage of the College All-Star Game from Soldier Field in Chicago (8:30 p.m, CT, ABC), pitting the NFL champion Miami Dolphins (coming off their undefeated season) against a team featuring future pro stars Bert Jones, Otis Armstrong and John Matuszak. Melvin Durslag’s preview article discusses the history of the game, which started in 1934 as a benefit for the Chicago Tribune Charities.*

*The game was started by Tribune sports editor Arch Ward, who was also responsible for major league baseball’s All-Star Game.

One of the problems the game faces (which helped end the game in the mid '70s) is a growing reluctance of NFL teams to allow their newly drafted stars to participate, due to both a concern about injuries and the amount of training camp the rookies will miss. This helps explain why the game’s usually a rout, and this year’s edition is expected to be no different, but the All Stars, coached by USC’s legendary John McKay, give the Fins all they can handle, and more. In the fourth quarter, buoyed by a strong defense led by Matuszak, the Stars trail the Dolphins only by 7-3, before Miami running back Larry Csonka scores the clinching touchdown in a surprisingly tough 14-3 victory.

And speaking of baseball’s All-Star Game, that’s this week as well. Before the days of cable TV and regularly scheduled interleague play, the All-Star Game really was must-see TV. For many of us living in Minnesota, it was one of the rare times we got to see National League players, whom we’d otherwise only see on the Saturday game of the week.

This year’s game is Tuesday night in Kansas City (7:00 p.m., NBC), with the Nationals (the league, not the team, which won't be around for another thirty years or so) routing the Americans 7-1 for their 10th win in the last 11 years. They aren't kidding about this being an all-star game, either; the Nats featured nine future Hall of Famers, including Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Joe Morgan, Ron Santo, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, Billy Williams, Willie Mays and Willie Stargell—plus that pesky Pete Rose character. The Americans countered with nine of their own: Carlton Fisk, Rod Carew, Brooks Robinson, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, Nolan Ryan, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers and Bert Blyleven. I wonder—will this year’s game do as well?

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What with so many regular series in summer reruns, we’ve been focusing the last few weeks on summer replacement shows. Ready for some more? Saturday night, Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber star in The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour (8:00 p.m., ABC), in place of the cancelled Julie Andrews show, with guests Ed McMahon, Teresa Graves and the Muledeer and Moondogg Medicine Show. On Thursday night NBC has Helen Reddy sitting in for Flip Wilson at 8:00 p.m., with fellow feminist Gloria Steinem, B.B. King, the New Seekers, Albert Brooks and the Modern Jazz Quartet; that's followed at 9:00 p.m. by the premiere of Dean Martin Presents Music Country, this week starring Johnny Cash, Mac Davis, Loretta Lynn, Marty Robbins and a cast of thousands.

There are plenty of movies to choose from this week, including the summertime staple, failed pilots for series that never came to pass. Two such are I Love a Mystery, an unsold pilot from 1966 with Ida Lupino (Monday, 8:00 p.m., NBC) and Crime Club (Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., CBS), which is only a year old, starring Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Rush, Paul Burke, Cloris Leachman, Martin Sheen, Victor Buono and William Devane. Great cast; I wonder why it didn't sell.

There is one kind of summer program not seen anymore, at least in Minneapolis: the twin Aquatennial parades. When I was a kid, the Minneapolis Aquatennial was the biggest summer festival around (it even featured as the backdrop for an episode of Route 66), and the two parades—the Grande Day Parade on Saturday and the Torchlight Parade on Wednesday—were major events. WCCO preempts its regular programming Saturday afternoon for the Grand Day parade starting at 2:30 p.m., featuring a pair of celebrity grand marshals, Larry Linville from M*A*S*H* and evangelist Billy Graham, and an appearance by Colonel Sanders. Keeping with the “Seas of Antiquity,” there are also a number of representatives from Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Greece.

*No coincidence that a CBS star would appear on a parade being televised by a CBS affiliate, right?

KSTP does the honors for the Torchlight parade, beginning at 8:30 p.m. (preempting Madigan and Search) with grand marshal Simcha Dimitz, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, along with the Israeli consul general, and another appearance by Colonel Sanders. Although the floats are the same ones from the Saturday parade (now with lights attached), I wonder if all of the Arab representatives still participated, considering the company they’d be keeping? After all, the Yom Kippur War is less than three months away.

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Since we’re talking about old TV, here’s something interesting—a program about TV shows that were already considered old in 1973. That’s not too meta for you, is it?

It’s CBS News Retrospective, airing Sunday afternoons at 5:00 p.m., in which the network dips into its vaults to rebroadcast some of its most acclaimed and influential CBS Reports documentaries from the fifties and sixties. This week it’s the 1963 documentary “The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson,” the landmark program that first shown the spotlight on ecology and the environment, specifically the uses of DDT and other pesticides, and the effects they had on birds, fish and the soil. Carson’s assertions were controversial then, and they remain controversial today.

Thanks to being in the Twin Cities for the summer (after the first of six years in the World's Worst Town™), I was able to see this limited-run series, which included several documentaries by Edward R. Murrow. This was advocacy television at its finest (in terms of quality, that is, not necessarily ideology), and these programs were great examples of a type of television journalism that’s pretty much nonexistent today. And I can’t help but wonder about the method behind CBS airing these shows at this particular time. Could it be that the Tiffany Network was reminding viewers of their great news tradition, in order to bolster the division’s credibility during the continuing coverage of the Watergate hearings? Or is that too cynical a thought?

Speaking of which, we’re reminded at the start of the programming section (as well as several times throughout the week) that regular programming stands to be preempted for those Senate Watergate hearings. The nation has just been stunned the previous week by former presidential aide Alexander Butterfield’s casual comment that there was tape recording going on in the Oval Office. On Monday, July 23, special prosecutor Archibald Cox will demand that the White House turn over transcripts of those taped conversations, which President Nixon will refuse to do, citing Executive Privilege.

What’s interesting is that even at this point, roughly a year before Nixon will be forced to resign, the public is still divided over the issue. While 50% believe former aide John Dean’s accusations that Nixon is covering up the affair, they’re also split evenly (38%-37%) as to whom they would believe if Nixon denies the charge. Ah, politics.

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We'll wrap things up with our cover story. Back in the days before the internet, Americans relied on television to give them the information they couldn’t get from their doctors. And what better “virtual” physicians to have than the kindly Marcus Welby and the dedicated Joe Gannon? Muriel Davidson’s cover story shares real-life incidents of lives being saved because of what viewers had seen on their favorite medical shows. 

A boy in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, administers mouth-to-mouth and heart massage on his asthmatic brother because he’d seen it done on Marcus Welby, M.D.; a man in Springfield, Missouri watching Welby self-diagnoses himself with a bleeding ulcer (he was right); a woman living in Los Angeles sees a man on Medical Center suffering from slurred speech, numb hands, and difficulty seeing – symptoms identical to hers. She tells her doctor she thinks she has M.S., because that’s what the character on Medical Center had. The skeptical doctor runs the tests, which confirm her suspicions. It’s not all WebMD-type diagnoses, though; another Welby episode tells the story of a brain-damaged boy who’s been labeled “slow”—the sensitivity and compassion of the episode produced thousands of letters of commendation.

Doctors caution people not to rely on fictional television stories in place of actual medical care, and point to patients having cancelled scheduled needed surgeries after seeing a Bold Ones episode about an unscrupulous doctor performing unnecessary surgery for profit. The producers of the shows say that their purpose is not to replace doctors, but to provide awareness education for viewers, pointing out potential health concerns or de-stigmatizing others, such as sexually-transmitted diseases.

Ultimately, the money line in the story points to the growing role of television in American society, and its power—at the time—to unify. Says a mother of a child suffering from a similar brain-damaged syndrome, who used the Welby episode to educate teachers and classmates on his condition, “It’s a miracle what can be done when people no longer are alone.” Words for thought, eh? TV

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This week in TV Guide: March 3, 1956

On the cover this week is a man who, once upon a time, was one of the most familiar faces on television: Hal March, host of the nation's top-rated program, The $64,000 Question, every Tuesday night at 9:00 pm CT on CBS. (Lynn Dollar, pictured next to March, is the show's "assistant.")

Hal March has that important quality that often makes the difference between a successful quiz show and one that comes and goes in a matter of weeks: likability. Contestants feel comfortable around him, and audiences like him because he's, well, human. One night he forgets to ask a contestant the $32,000 question, another time he accidentally gives the answer as well as the question, and then there was the time he almost forget the sponsor plug before signing off. . .

But, like Donald Trump in a completely different context, March doesn't seem to be hurt by these flubs. In fact, he's increasingly moving beyond quiz shows to other areas of entertainment. He's already appeared as himself on Perry Como's show, played a forger on Omnibus, acted opposite Maurice Evans and Vivian Blair on stage, and even made the big screen in the Warner Brothers movie It's Always Fair Weather. (We just saw him in an old Burke's Law episode last month, in which he played the killer.) The talk now is that March might be headed for Broadway, and more movies may be in store as well.

The scandals put all of that to an end, of course; although there's no evidence that March was involved in fixing games (if anything, the pressure to rig the show came not from the producers, as was the case with other quiz shows, but from Revlon, the sponsor), there's that taint of guilt by association, and with it March's opportunities begin to try up. There are the odd guest star bits here and there; he's good, not great, but very natural in his technique. By 1969, though, things seem to have turned a corner, and March signs up to host a game show called It's Your Bet. But only a few weeks into taping, tests show that March has lung cancer, and he dies in 1970, only 49 years old.

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If you've partaken in TV Guide's "As We See It" editorials over the years, then you know that one of their enthusiasms has always been for "quality" television; therefore, it's safe to say they're very enthusiastic about NBC's programming the next couple of weeks.

It begins this week with the network's telecast of George Bernard Shaw's witty "Caesar and Cleopatra," starring Claire Bloom and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Tuesday night on Producers' Showcase (7:00 p.m.), and continues next week with Laurence Olivier's big-screen version of Richard III* and Hallmark Hall of Fame's "The Taming of the Shrew." The programs face steep competition, especially "Caesar and Cleopatra," which has to deal with Burns & Allen, Arthur Godfrey and I Love Lucy on CBS. And while the editor, probably Merrill Panitt, points out that TV Guide "is far from a highbrow publication," he adds that they are "grateful for any sort of programming that tends to enlarge television's scope." How, for example, could one say that they don't like Shakespeare or The $64,000 Question unless they've seen them?

*For what it's worth, Richard III was the first three-hour telecast of a film ever in the United States; it was also the first time that a movie had ever aired on television (on a Sunday afternoon, so as not to affect the ratings) and opened in American theaters on the same day.

NBC should be thanked, Panitt concludes, "for gambling money and prestige on the theory that viewers want such fine fare." I suppose at some point they did, although even in the Golden Age documentaries suffered, and Voice of Firestone dragged down the ratings of every show on the network that night. Quality television has been said to have made a comeback on cable in the last few years, and indeed there is no doubt a high quality of drama available for viewing. But as for the classics, I don't think we'll be seeing them anytime soon. Not even on PBS.

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What else is on this week? Saturday night means one thing in many households: The Lawrence Welk Show (8:00 p.m., ABC), known at the time as The Dodge Dancing Party. Welk is the subject of an unbylined profile this week, and if you need any evidence of his popularity, consider this anecdote: Last year he and his orchestra played five nights a week at the Aragon Ballroom in Ocean Park, California grossed the maestro $100,000, which in today's dollars comes out to nearly $1.2 million. (Or "Ah-One point-Ah-Two" million, if you prefer.) Besides that, there's his income from his television show, and then the royalties from all those records he sells. So in other words, he's doing all right.

Now this is an interesting bit of counterprogramming. On Sunday's Famous Film Festival (6:30 p.m., ABC), it's the first of a two-part showing of the aforementioned G.B. Shaw's aforementioned Caesar and Cleopatra, made in 1945 and starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Raines. Now, let's think about this for a minute: if you've got a color TV, you can see NBC's Monday night production in color (the big-screen edition, although filmed in Technicolor, will be shown in black-and-white), and you won't have to wait until next week to find out how it ends. Even though the movie version airs one night earlier than its TV counterpart , I know which one I'd be watching. 

Monday is a fine day for music lovers, beginning with the premiere of The Gordon MacRae Show" (6:30 p.m., NBC). The star of Carousel and Oklahoma will host the 15-minute program (in color!) each Monday, as part of the half-hour block that includes John Cameron Swayze's Camel News Caravan. Meantime, young Roberta Peters is the guest soloist on Voice of Firestone (7:30 p.m., ABC). Peters, one of the greatest sopranos ever (as well as one of the most popular), is a frequent presence on television over the years, appearing on Ed Sullivan's show a record 65 times. 

On Tuesday, The Phil Silvers Show (7:00 p.m., CBS) presents one of the greatest episodes in sitcom history, "The Court Martial," in which Bilko winds up defending a chimp that's accidentally been inducted into the Army. Silvers himself called it "the funniest half-hour on television, unconditionally." Probably the funniest segment of this hilarious episode occurs during the court martial (which would have been funny anyway), when the chimp, given the name "Harry Speakup" by the induction center, begins acting up and Silvers, completely in character, ad-libs to the chimp's antics. You can see the other actors in the scene trying valiantly to keep from laughing, but Silvers never breaks stride. How wise they were to let the camera keep rolling. Unfortunately, the clip of this that used to be online has been taken down, but I'd be surprised if most of you haven't seen it.

Once Walt Disney made the decision to produce programming for television, it was just a matter of time before other studios followed suit, and we can see one early example of this on Wednesday with M-G-M Parade (7:30 p.m., ABC). The half-hour show, hosted for the final time this week by actor and future U.S. Senator George Murphy (next week, Walter Pidgeon takes over as host), is one of MGM's first ventures into television. They don't really get it, though, at least not with this series, which combines clips from vintage MGM movies of the past, and plugs for upcoming MGM releases. (This week, for example, Judy Garland sings in an excerpt from The Harvey Girls, and we see previews from the new movie Meet Me in Las Vegas, with Cyd Charisse and Dan Dailey.) Eventually, the studio succumbs to the show's bad reviews and adds more extensive, condensed versions of its classic movies. The series runs for another two months before fading from our screens.

For four seasons, the CBS anthology series Climax! presented various tales, mostly of the mystery type; it was later known as Climax Mystery Theater. However, this Thursday the show presents a real change of pace with "The Louella Parsons Story," based on her autobiography The Gay Illiterate. (7:30 p.m., CBS) Parsons, America's most influential (i.e. loved and/or feared) gossip columnist from the early '30s into the '60s, achieved a level of stardom as great as that of some of her subjects, and she maintained a feud with her hated rival Hedda Hopper for decades. What makes this show so unusual is not just the subject matter, but that following the story, there's a tribute from stars of the industry, emceed by Jack Benny and featuring Gene Autry, Charles Boyer, Rock Hudson, Susan Hayward and John Wayne, among others. An odd hybrid of genres, no?

It just didn't work out for Barry on Brooks. 

Friday on Our Miss Brooks (7:30 p.m., CBS), Connie (Eve Arden) tries to collect a $1,000 prize, despite the fact that the penalty for gambling is dismissal from the school. Our Miss Brooks is the subject of this week's review by Robert Stahl, who focuses on the changes to the show's format for this, the fourth and final season. Gone is the familiar public school, replaced by a tony private one; gone too is Mr. Boynton, Eve's long-time romantic interest, replaced by a physical education teacher (played by Gene Barry). And gone as well, says Stahl, is any subtlety the show might have had; "It would seem that Miss Arden and her writers don't have too much respect for their viewers' taste and intelligence," opting instead for unbelivable situations and slapstick humor. The changes have done nothng to improve the series, according to Stahl; while the producers, in an effort to rectify their mistake, have since brought back the Boynton character ("Barry has apparently read the writing on the blackboard because he has already fled the show"), it's a case of too little, too late. "Some of the situations might be funny if only the writers would lay off the slapstick." Instead, it's the show itself that gets laid off at the end of the season.

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According to the Teletype, Mister Peepers, which ends its three-season run in June, will be reborn as a weekday show, airing Monday through Friday afternoons. Wally Cox, of course, will return in the title role, but it's not certain how many other original cast members will join him. This never happens, for whatever reason, but I'm not surprised; the show had dropped in the ratings after Peepers had married his sweetheart (as shows often do), and it's difficult to imagine that it could have continued for long at a five-a-week pace. In reruns, maybe, but original episodes? On the other hand, it could have become television's first comedy soap. Think of the possibilities!

There's also an item about how sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease; ABC has fielded viewer complaints about the number of commercials in its Afternoon Film Festival, which interrupted the movie every five or six minutes. The new plan: limit the breaks to every ten or eleven minutes. There are also plans to have host Allyn Edwards give news headlines during some of the breaks. According to the always-reliable Wikipedia, Afternoon Film Festival also suffered from a lack of variety; ABC's deal with the J. Arthur Rank Company for 35 films meant that some titles were repeated every two or three weeks. 

And The Johnny Carson Show, which airs Thursday nights on CBS, will be wrapping things up at the end of the month. The sponsors have cancelled, and the show went through seven directors ("through no fault of Carson's") during its 39-week run. It returns as a daytime show through the summer, and later Carson will begin a five-year run as host of Who Do You Trust? before going on to even bigger and better things.

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Finally, we're always up for a good discussion on censorship, and this week we look at what gives a network censor headaches. A similar article appeared in a 1980 issue, and though there's a vast difference between the shows of the mid '50s and early '80s, the censor's job is pretty much the same. The censor in question is Stockton Helffrich, Director of Continuity Acceptance for NBC, and he strongly believes that one of the jobs of a censor is not to censor. "We are not kill-joys, spoilsports, crape-hangers or wet blankets," and part of the philosophy is that "children should be able to reach adulthood as really mature people without prejudices." What that means is that much of their work deals with censoring "racial stereotypes, religious oversimplifications, unkindness toward the physically handicapped, ignorance regarding the emotionally disturbed."

However, censors also represent the interests of sponsors, which means if your favorite show is brought to you by Your Gas Company, you probably aren't going to see someone commit suicide by sticking their head in an oven. If the show is sponsored by a billiard company, the script can't suggest that pool halls are the exclusive domain of underworld characters and shady punks. While the sponsors' interests clearly need to be taken into account, Helffrich warns against "authors and producers [indulging] in fearful knuckling under." In other words, don't self-censor yourself - let the professionals decide what ought to be included.

Oh, there's the occasional "low neckline," but Helffrich says those are "an exception on current TV," and there's no discussion of profanity; I suppose that isn't even an issue in 1956. For Helffrich and his three dozen colleagues (and assistants working with them), it's a never-ending job, encouraged by the occasional constructive letter from a viewer that "has made us take pause and try to do better." TV  

Around the dial

We'll begin this week at Comfort TV, where David asks a question that's both practical and existential: how much TV is too much? It speaks to not only the quantity but the quality of what's available out there nowadays, and leads to another question: what has television become, and (not rhetorically) what purpose does it serve? I think this could well be the beginning of an important discussion that's going to have to take place at some time or other, before the industry winds up consuming itself. As so many revolutions do.

And now, on to a lighter note: the bottle from which Barbara Eden pops out in I Dream of Jeannie is currently on display at the Smithsonian Museum's National Museum of American History, and Smithsonian Magazine uses the occasion to look at the history contained in Jeannie, as well as its legacy.

Travalanche celebrates the Peggy Cass Centennial. For those of you my age, you'll remember her as a staple of the Goodson-Todman shows, especially To Tell the Truth (where she appeared over one thousand times), but you'll see that there was more to her than just playing games.

You'll recall how Coronet Blue ended without answering the main question of what the phrase "Coronet Blue" actually meant, but that's not the only series to leave viewers hanging. At Television Obscurities, the creator of the cancelled series So Help Me Todd tells us how that series would have ended.

Terence pays tribute to the late Dabney Coleman at A Shroud of Thoughts. Coleman, who died last week aged 92, was known for playing characters you loved to hate, and as we all know, it takes a lot of talent to do that for as long as he does.

At A View from the Junkyard, Roger and Mike compare notes on "The Interrogators," a Steed/Tara episode of The Avengers, and while we all know how fantastic some of the plots for this show can be (especially at this point), this is a surprisingly tense one that holds together well.

Rutland Weekend Television is the latest review from John at Cult TV Blog. It ran from 1975-76, parodying television of the time, and if you like Monty Python, you'll like this. Furthermore, if you like the shows that John writes about, you'll like this. I can't think of a better recommendation. TV  

Around the dial

We begin this week at The Guardian, where David Chase says that with the introduction of commercials to formerly commercial-free streaming services, the "era of complex and ambitious TV is over." I'm of two minds about this, since I'm sure many of my favorite programs from the era of classic television would fall outside of Chase's definition of "quality"; nonetheless, it's hard not to agree with his assessment, at least as it's applied to today's television. The money quote: "That means above all that TV shows, as they always have, will be directed towards advertising executives and not toward the public. You can thus expect the same tired old action driven sludge procedurals like NCIS or Blue Bloods and mindless situation comedies starring Tim Allen." I don't think that's a fair criticism of Tim Allen (although I've never been a fan of his shows per se, or any contemporary sitcoms for that matter), but even the quality shows of the Golden Age had to fight interference by advertisers and network executives, so what goes around, comes around.

If you're a fan of MST3K, you know what it's like when Tom Servo gets so overwhelmed by something that his head explodes? That's kind of the state that John finds himself in at Cult TV Blog, in trying to reconcile his Prisoner theory that Number 6 is a plant with the most recent episode he looks at, "The Schizoid Man." Read along and see what you think.

At Comfort TV, David continues his series on his 50 favorite classic TV characters with Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman. An Emmy winner for Outstanding Lead Actress, her portrayal of a superhero shines on multiple levels, making her a popular character during the show's lifetime and warmly remembered in the years since.

The View from the Junkyard returns to the world of The Avengers, as Roger and Mike compare notes on "Dead Man's Treasure," an adventure that combines murder and auto racing in a most charming, entertaining way. Think Wacky Races or The Great Race, and add the patented Avengers twist, and—well, you're on the way. 

It doesn't have anything to do with television—not really, anyway—but Andrew's piece at The Lucky Strike Papers on how certain dates just stand out in our memories strikes home with me. They can be happy memories (your birthday, or, in my case, a date like December 24), or they can be less so (November 22), but they become shorthand for something of great importance to us.

Travalanche pays tribute to Joyce Randolph, the last surviving member (by 20 years!) of the original Honeymooners cast, who died last week aged 99. Although she played other roles after Trixie Norton, fans always remembered her; her death means that those living from the Golden Age continue to grow smaller and smaller.

At A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence looks back on the 50th anniversary of Happy Days, which premiered on ABC in 1974. Now, you'll recall that this is when I was exiled in the World's Worst Town™, so I wasn't there, so to speak, at the start; although I was always aware of it, it was never a show that I got into, but there's no question it's a part of television history. TV